BOSTON, Massachusetts, November 19, 2008 (ENS) – Five large U.S. corporations and a coalition of investors and environmental groups today announced that they have formed a new organization to lobby for strong U.S. climate and energy legislation in early 2009 to spur a clean energy economy and reduce global warming.

The founding members of Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy, to be known as BICEP, are Levi Strauss & Co., Nike, Starbucks, Sun Microsystems and The Timberland Company.

BICEP members believe that climate change impacts will ripple across all sectors of the economy and that new business perspectives are needed to solve the climate and energy challenges facing America.

“These companies have a clear message for next year’s Congress – move quickly on climate change to kick-start a transition to a prosperous clean energy economy fueled by green jobs,” said Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres, the coalition of investors and public interest groups that helped to organize BICEP.

The BICEP companies said today that greenhouse gas reduction targets should be set to at least 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. Of all the target figures demanded by various groups, these are some of the strictest.

To accomplish these goals, they would like to see the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama and the new Democrat-controlled Congress establish an economy-wide greenhouse gas cap-and-trade system that auctions 100 percent of carbon pollution allowances, promotes energy efficiency and accelerates clean energy technologies.

BICEP’s plan includes a redoubling of energy efficiency efforts, fuel-efficient vehicles, plug-in electric hybrids, low-carbon fuels, and transit-oriented development.

They would stimulate job growth through investment in climate-based solutions, especially green-collar jobs in low-income and climate-vulnerable communities.

They would have the government adopt a national renewable portfolio standard requiring 20 percent of electricity to be generated from renewable energy sources by 2020, and 30 percent by 2030.

Clean energy can lead to green collar
jobs, such as manufacturing wind turbines
at this new Clipper Windpower plant in
Cedar Rapids, Iowa. (Photo courtesy
Clipper Windpower)

And they would limit construction of new coal-fired power plants to those that capture and store carbon emissions. They would create incentives for carbon capture technology on new and existing plants, and phase out existing coal-based power plants that do not capture and store carbon by 2030.

The new coalition’s goal is to work directly with key allies in the business community and members of Congress to pass meaningful energy and climate change legislation.

They will likely find allies among the member companies and environmental groups in the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, USCAP, a coalition of 26 corporations and six nonprofit environmental and conservation organizations established in January 2007 to encourage goverment to establish a cap-and-trade program for carbon emissions.

USCAP held a press conference in Washington Tuesday to make the economic case for cap-and-trade legislation that they would like to see written soon after the Obama administration picks up the reins of power.

The non-partisan group said that cap-and-trade legislation is urgently needed to prevent the serious impacts of climate change and will create new economic opportunities.

“While the magnitude of needed reductions are not free of costs, legislation is necessary to spur innovation in green technologies that will create jobs, increase economic activity and provide the foundation for a vibrant, low-carbon economy,” USCAP said in a statement.

“The economic opportunity embedded within the shift away from fossil fuels is historic,” said David Crane, NRG Energy’s chief executive. “For example, think of the enormous fortunes made by those who were on the right side of the shift from the horse to the internal combustion engine. The right climate solution, a moderate price on carbon, can help create real economic opportunities.”

“Investment in new technologies and the infrastructure needed for a low-carbon economy are effective ways to generate the jobs and economic growth the U.S. needs to address the current economic crisis,” said James Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy. “We must position the U.S. to succeed in the new low-carbon, global economy and this is the best way to accomplish that.”

USCAP includes the following corporations and environmental NGOs: Alcoa, AIG, Boston Scientific, BP America, Caterpillar, ConocoPhillips, Chrysler, John Deere, Dow, Duke Energy, DuPont, Environmental Defense Fund, Exelon, Ford, FPL Group, General Electric, General Motors, Johnson & Johnson, Marsh, National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council, NRG Energy, The Nature Conservancy, PepsiCo, Pew Center on Global Climate Change, PG&E, PNM Resources, Rio Tinto, Shell, Siemens, World Resources Institute, and Xerox.

At the press conference, Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp cited a recent University of Maryland study showing that unchecked climate change will strain public budgets and cut growth across all sectors of the economy.

By contrast, a cap-and-trade program designed to cut carbon emissions could provide an economic stimulus, he said.

“A cap can instantly create new customers and new jobs for U.S. manufacturers in the supply chain for clean energy. Think of wind turbines and all of the cement and steel that go into them,” said Krupp. “It’s the energy and economic revitalization policy America needs now.”

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STOCKHOLM, Sweden, August 18, 2008 (ENS) – The world’s supplies of clean, fresh water cannot sustain today’s “profligate” use and inadequate management, which have brought shrinking food supplies and rising food costs to most countries, WWF Director General James Leape told the opening session of World Water Week in Stockholm today.

“Behind the world food crisis is a global freshwater crisis, expected to rapidly worsen as climate change impacts intensify,” Leape said. “Irrigation-fed agriculture provides 45 percent of the world’s food supplies, and without it, we could not feed our planet’s population of six billion people.”

Leape warns that many of the world’s irrigation areas are highly stressed and drawing more water than rivers and groundwater reserves can sustain, especially in view of climate change. At the same time, he said, freshwater food reserves are declining in the face of the quickening pace of dam construction and unsustainable water extractions from rivers.

The World Water Week fountain in
Stockholm (Photo by Alex de Sousa)

At a time when billions of people live without access to safe drinking water or suffer ill health due to poor sanitation, when food producers battle biofuel producers for land and water resources, and when global climate change is altering the overall water balance, 2,500 water experts are gathered this week at the Stockholm International Fairs and Congress Center to craft solutions to these problems.

World Water Week is an annual event co-ordinated by the Stockholm International Water Institute. This year’s conference has the overall theme of “Progress and Prospects on Water: For A Clean and Healthy World with Special Focus on Sanitation” in keeping with the UN declaration of 2008 as the International Year of Sanitation.

Prince Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands had good news for the delegates in his opening speech today.

The Prince of Orange, who chairs the UN Secretary General’s Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation during this special year, announced, “The number of people living without a supply of improved drinking water has now dropped well below one billion!”

“More than half the global population now have water piped to their homes and the number of people using unimproved water supplies continues to decline,” he said, praising the delegates for this accomplishment.

This year, the prince said, progress towards adequate sanitation has begun on international, regional, national and local levels. “The regional sanitation conferences for example, such as LatinoSan, AfricaSan, EaSan and SacoSan, produced unprecedented declarations that provide a strong foundation for developing the water and sanitation sector in these regions,” he said.

In June, the African Union Summit on Water and Sanitation in Sharm El Sheikh, attended by 52 heads of state and government, unanimously adopted a declaration on water and sanitation that shows that African leaders are giving top priority to water and sanitation, the prince said. “It also provides a solid basis for further developing the sector in Africa. I personally consider this result to be an enormous leap forward.”

Children in Sudan enjoy a clean
drink of water. (Photo courtesy UNICEF)

But Prince Willem said much more must be done to meet the UN’s Millenium Development Goal to halve the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015 from the year 2000 baseline.

Citing a report by the World Health Organization and UNICEF, he said, “The report’s worrying conclusion is that, at the current rate, the world will miss its MDG sanitation target by more than 700 million people. If we are to reach the target we now need to provide at least 173 million people per year with access to improved sanitation.”

A consistent supporter of World Water Week, the prince told the delegates he finds it “unthinkable” to let a year go by without visiting the conference, although he is supposed to be in Beijing observing the Olympic Games in his capacity as a member of the International Organizing Committee.

“I see similarities between these athletes and yourselves,” said the prince. “You show the same commitment and willpower. And the Olympic Dream is also your dream: to strive for a bright future of mankind. ‘One world, one dream.’ A world in which everyone can lead a healthy life in dignity. A world that offers the chance of personal development for all. This is our common dream.”

The delegates will need all the inspiration they can get to overcome the problems they face.

As developing countries confront the first global food crisis since the 1970s as well as unprecedented water scarcity, a new 53 city survey presented at the conference by the International Water Management Institute indicates that 80 percent of those studied are using untreated or partially treated wastewater for agriculture.

Latrine over a waterway in
Haiti (Photo by Remi Kaupp)

In over 70 percent of the cities studied, more than half of urban agricultural land is irrigated with wastewater that is either raw or diluted in streams.

“Irrigating with wastewater isn’t a rare practice limited to a few of the poorest countries,” said IWMI researcher Liqa Raschid-Sally and lead author of a report on the survey results. “It’s a widespread phenomenon, occurring on 20 million hectares across the developing world, especially in Asian countries, like China, India and Vietnam, but also around nearly every city of sub-Saharan Africa and in many Latin American cities as well.”

Wastewater is most commonly used to produce vegetables and cereals, especially rice, according to this and other IWMI reports, raising concerns about health risks for consumers, particularly when they eat uncooked vegetables.

In Accra, Ghana’s capital city, for instance, an estimated one-tenth of the city’s two million inhabitants daily purchase vegetables produced on just 100 hectares of urban agricultural land irrigated with wastewater, says the IWMI report. “That gives you an idea,” said Raschid-Sally, “of the large potential of wastewater agriculture for both helping and hurting great numbers of urban consumers.”

“And it isn’t just affluent consumers of exotic vegetables whose welfare is at stake,” she added. “Poor consumers of inexpensive street food also depend on urban agriculture.”

Consumers across the 53 cities said they would prefer to avoid wastewater produce. But most of the time, they have no way of knowing the origin of the products they buy. Farmers, too, are aware that irrigating with wastewater may pose health risks both for themselves and the consumers of their produce, but they have little choice, since safe groundwater is seldom an accessible alternative, according to the IWMI report.

Few developing countries have official, enforceable guidelines for the use of wastewater in agriculture. As a result, though the practice may be theoretically forbidden or controlled, it is in fact “unofficially tolerated,” the IWMI found.

The report highlights indigenous practices that can reduce the health risks from wastewater agriculture. In Indonesia, Nepal, Ghana and Vietnam, for example, farmers store wastewater in ponds to allow suspended solids to settle out.

The dried up bed of Kenya’s
Voi River (Photo credit unknown)

Countries lacking the means for adequate wastewater treatment can still reduce health risks through low-cost interventions, such as the use of drip irrigation and washing of fresh produce in clean water.

Of the world’s total water resources, 97.5 percent is salty and of the remaining but mainly frozen freshwater, only one percent is available for human use, said Leape, the WWF chief.

“Even this tiny proportion, however, would be enough for humans to live on Earth if the water cycle was properly functioning and if we managed our water use wisely,” he said.

But Leape warned the conference delegates that the world is a long way from being ready for a worsening water crisis in part because of climate change and lack of an ecosystem approach to freshwater management.

“Water management for human needs alone is damaging the natural systems we all depend on,” Leape said. “No management is even worse.”

“We are also concerned that the world continues to mainly discuss adaption to climate change rather than doing it,” Leape said. “We have been doing it, all over the world, and we have found that that improving the health of freshwater ecosystems now makes a great contribution to improving their resilience to climate impacts in the future.”

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Australia is commencing a very ambitious project that will connect the east and west coasts of the continent with a corridor of wildlife refuge. In light of global warming and the expected mass extinctions of many life forms, Australia wants to provide shelter for animals; they will provide a home for the furry, the cuddly and the scaly. The way in which this wildlife refuge will protect animals is that as climate change impacts and destroys previous habitats, the animals will have this nature preserve to live in.

Imagine this area of land as a giant belt tied around the waist of Australia. The area is being called a climate “spine”; it’s funnier to think of it as a belt that keeps the country healthy, and slim! The whole concept is a no-brainer for Australia as they already have most of the land within the 1,740 mile long spine designated as protected habitat. The work that remains to be done is connecting up a few portions of land between national parks, state lands and protected forests.

Australia is a land that is drying up as a result of climate change trends. Creating a protected segment of land will give the whole continent some measure of resilience and maintain a better chance for the survival of the many organisms that inhabit the continent. One cannot help but wonder why this preserved corridor is only running east-west. What about the whole north and south part of the continent? There must be many organisms living there as well; can all these creatures really make it hundreds of miles during a traumatic weather incident?